Along with recent spread of computers, materials used in the office are created by an application program such as a wordprocessor or spreadsheet software installed in a computer. Generally, application data created by the application program is printed by a printer, the printed material is copied by a necessary number, and the copies are distributed at a meeting or the like.
Distributed materials are bound and saved by a binder or the like, or managed by an electronic filing apparatus.
In some cases, application data are managed by a common file server or database software to share information.
Printed materials to be distributed are often copies of a material which is printed first. Also, a distributed material is often copied and redistributed.
Repetitive copying degrades the image quality, resulting in a poor image.
When a color original is distributed, it is copied in monochrome at a very low image quality in most cases because a color copying machine is expensive and is not popular.
To cite part of a distributed paper original and newly reuse it as computer data, the image is read by a scanner and processed as an image. Alternatively, the read image is read by an OCR to extract character data.
However, when an original is processed as an image, the data amount greatly increases. It becomes difficult to process the image and correct part of the image.
Also when character data is extracted by an OCR, problems occur such that correct character data cannot be obtained due to an error, even if characters are correctly recognized, the font type and size cannot be reproduced, or the layout information is lost.
Data can be easily reused by acquiring application data managed by a file server or database. For data which is not stored in the file server or database by the user himself, the user does not know the name and search parameter with which the data is stored, and can hardly acquire the data.